West Philadelphia

West Philadelphia is a section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It reaches from the western shore of the Schuylkill River to the city limits of Philadelphia, and it is comprised of rolling hills. Starting with the first wave of Irish immigrants in the early 19th century, West Philadelphia was home to large numbers of European immigrants and their descendants. White flight in the early 1960s completed the transition to a majority-black population, with many blacks moving into the neighborhood from the American South during the 1980s. Since the 1980s, gentrification, immigration, and the urban Native American relocation movement brought more racial diversity. Immigration from East Asia, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, Haiti, Barbados, and Africa contributed to these demographic changes. In 2010, West Philadelphia had a population of 216,433 people.